Judge Orders Cheney to Preserve Official Records
A federal judge has ordered Vice President Dick Cheney to preserve all his official records pending resolution of a lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued a preliminary injunction to bar destruction of the records in a lawsuit filed by a watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the Washington Post reports. The group contends Cheney might destroy some records covered by the Presidential Records Act of 1978.
Kollar-Kotelly said she was acting until she rules in the case, filed earlier this month. “Those unprotected documents could be transferred to other entities, destroyed, or not preserved, and if any of these events occur, the damage is inherently irreparable; once documentary material is gone, it cannot be retrieved,” she wrote.
Anne Weismann, chief counsel for the plaintiff, called the decision “a pretty strong opinion.” She told the Post it preserves “everything in the broadest possible interpretation of what the law requires—not their narrow interpretation.”
The plaintiffs had argued Cheney was interpreting the law to exclude his work on the National Security Council and his actions taken without instructions from the president, such as his efforts to win reauthorization of a secret terrorism wiretapping program.
The suit stems from Cheney’s position that he is not part of the executive branch of government, the Associated Press reports.
